President Biden to unveil new minimum tax on billionaires in budget

[applegrove]

President Biden to unveil new minimum tax on billionaires in budget

First White House attempt to target billionaires with tax plan comes amid potential revival of talks with Manchin

By Jeff Stein at the Washington Post

Today at 4:00 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/03/26/billionaire-tax-budget-biden/

"SNIP.......

The White House will unveil a new minimum tax targeting billionaires as part of its 2023 budget Monday, proposing a tax on the richest 700 Americans for the first time, according to five people with knowledge of the matter and an administration document obtained by The Washington Post.

The “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” plan under President Biden would establish a 20 percent minimum tax rate on all American households worth more than $100 million, the document says. The majority of new revenue raised by the tax would come from billionaires.

Biden has long favored higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but the White House has not introduced a tax plan specifically designed to hit billionaires until now. The plan comes amid signs that the administration’s negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) over stalled White House economic proposal may be reviving. But all previous efforts to tax billionaires have failed amid major political head winds, and it is unclear if Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) will go along with the plan.

Many billionaires can pay far lower tax rates than average Americans because the federal government does not tax the increase in the value of their stock holdings until those assets are sold. Billionaires are able to borrow against their accumulated gains without triggering taxes on capital gains, enabling huge accumulations of wealth to go virtually untaxed by the federal government.

......SNIP"

Applegrove: Exceedingly fair to the billionaires.

[dumbcat]

2. If the next year the value of their stock holdings

went down, would they get a refund?

[applegrove]

4. I think they probably on count unrealized capital gains that are safe bets. The same

amount the banks are basing loans on.

[dumbcat]

12. Who would determine what are "safe bets"?

Do we let IRS bureaucrats make stock price predictions on individual stocks and companies? How would that work? If the IRS determines that a particular company's stock price increases are a "safe bet" what does that do to the free market?

Are we comfortable with the IRS doing that even if a Repub administration is in charge? Sounds like all sorts of opportunities for graft.

[applegrove]

13. Don't know. How would graft work? Would the IRS agent assessing

the solidity of stock values be vulnerable to $$$ when they already deal and decide on other people's taxes? Why is one more graft heavy than the other?

[dumbcat]

16. I for one don't want IRS agents

assessing the solidity of stock values. Financial analysts and the free market do that. IRS agents can be bought, the "market" is much harder to influence.

Yes, I think we really want to move to a "wealth" tax rather than an "income" tax, but that is going to be tough to push through a Congress of wealthy individuals.

[unblock]

3. While I applaud the concept, 20% is appallingly low.

[applegrove]

7. I know. Seems something was lost in the sausage-making.

[unblock]

15. Yeah, it's indicative of just how much the wealthy own our politics

We'll run into a ton of resistance on this as it is.

Republicans will raise an insane amount of money from the crazy rich to stop this or reverse this later.

I think the Biden did the math and figured he couldn't let anyone make the argument that the concept was ok but the number was too high.

No one can really say 20% is unfair or soaking the rich.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Hope he comes up with something that sticks...

The wealthy have stables of well-paid lawyers and accountants who come up with this stuff-- far more than the government, which is trying to get them to pay.

[Scrivener7]

6. The least they can do. The vast majority of us pay a higher percentage than that.

[dumbcat]

14. No, we don't.

Not even close.

Do the math. For example, US median family income is $67,500. That means only half of us earn more, not the "vast majority".

For an income of 67,500, even with NO deductions the tax for married filing jointly (most of us) from the tax table is:

$1,975 plus 12% of the amount over $19,750

which is about $7705 tax for an effective tax rate of 11.4%.

I make considerably more than that, and even the vast majority, and my effective tax rate taking only the standard deduction is just about 11%.

Take whatever real numbers you wish and do the math. The vast majority of us do not pay a 20% tax rate, and never have.

[Turbineguy]

8. Trumpists won't like that

protect the starving billionaires!

[ProudMNDemocrat]

9. Jeff Bezos paid ZERO Federal income Taxes on $11 BILLION in profits for 2019.

If he can have a mega yacht built for him in the Netherlands to resemble the ones owned by Russian Oligarchs, he can pay more in taxes and still have BILLIONS to play with.

What's the problem here?

[Sneederbunk]

10. There are some Dems who will vote against that..

[pdxflyboy]

11. Two come to mind

Right now.

[Kingofalldems]

17. Gonna be of great use in the campaign too.

You know republicans will be against it.

[Kingofalldems]

18. Kick and rec for Trump's secret pals.

[Deminpenn]

19. This proposal will be wildly popular

The people this affects aren't exactly sympathetic figures.